Chapter 11: Acoustic Officiating

FIMP Code of Competition & Technical Handbook · 2026–2029 Edition (in force from 1 January 2026)

Article 11.1: Acoustic Officials

1. 11.1.1Each heat shall have a Chief Acoustic Official and four Acoustic Officials, one at each corner of the basin.
2. 11.1.2Acoustic Officials shall hold a FIMP Level 3 Acoustic certificate and shall pass an annual hearing test across 125–8,000 Hz.

Article 11.2: Measurement

1. 11.2.1Call volume shall be measured by Class 1 sound level meters with A-weighting and “fast” time weighting.
2. 11.2.2Meters shall be calibrated at 94.0 dB and 1 kHz before each session.
3. 11.2.3Where Hawk-Ear is in use, its measurements are definitive. Where it is not, the median of the four corner readings applies.

Article 11.3: Hawk-Ear

1. 11.3.1Hawk-Ear consists of 32 hydrophones and 64 poolside microphones synchronised to 0.1 milliseconds.
2. 11.3.2Hawk-Ear records each athlete's position 25 times per second.
3. 11.3.3Hawk-Ear data is the property of FIMP and is published through the FIMP Open Data portal.